Japanese "Co-Prosperity Sphere": What was it really?
Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2021 9:32 pm
Due to certain grumblings around other forum topics and my own curiosity, I've decided to open up a (hopefully civil) discussion regarding the concept of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", and Imperial Japan as a whole.
As a person born to a Korean father and Chinese mother, my view on Imperial Japan has obviously been influenced by their families' experiences preceding and during World War II. Even today, while my parents themselves harbor no ill-will towards the Japanese, my grandparents all maintain a particular hatred towards them for the treatment they suffered on a regular basis while under Japanese occupation. However, there are some people who still seem to wholeheartedly buy into the stated goal of Japanese expansionism and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, which was to lift up Asians as a whole and mutually benefit under a Japanese-led alliance of sorts, with no strings attached.
While it is entirely possible the Co-Prosperity Sphere was indeed started with earnest intent such as this, it was still clouded from the outset by an innate sense of Japanese racial superiority; an "equitable inequality", if you will. There was no possible way Chinese, Korean, or any other Asian race would have received an equal voice in this "Co-Prosperity" group. This is even before the entire movement was co-opted by militaristic and ultra-nationalist Japanese officials and used to justify waging their war of aggression across the Pacific. Even today, we have an entire shrine in the middle of Japan dedicated to offering a revisionist history of World War II and placing condemned war criminals on golden pedestals to worship as honorable figures of a glorious era. Taking this all into account, I cannot see how Japanese expansionism, when combined with the conduct of their soldiers and their treatment of civilians, is justified with even the most selfless of intentions.
But of course, this is just my view. What do you all think of this controversial aspect of 20th-century Asian history?
As a person born to a Korean father and Chinese mother, my view on Imperial Japan has obviously been influenced by their families' experiences preceding and during World War II. Even today, while my parents themselves harbor no ill-will towards the Japanese, my grandparents all maintain a particular hatred towards them for the treatment they suffered on a regular basis while under Japanese occupation. However, there are some people who still seem to wholeheartedly buy into the stated goal of Japanese expansionism and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, which was to lift up Asians as a whole and mutually benefit under a Japanese-led alliance of sorts, with no strings attached.
While it is entirely possible the Co-Prosperity Sphere was indeed started with earnest intent such as this, it was still clouded from the outset by an innate sense of Japanese racial superiority; an "equitable inequality", if you will. There was no possible way Chinese, Korean, or any other Asian race would have received an equal voice in this "Co-Prosperity" group. This is even before the entire movement was co-opted by militaristic and ultra-nationalist Japanese officials and used to justify waging their war of aggression across the Pacific. Even today, we have an entire shrine in the middle of Japan dedicated to offering a revisionist history of World War II and placing condemned war criminals on golden pedestals to worship as honorable figures of a glorious era. Taking this all into account, I cannot see how Japanese expansionism, when combined with the conduct of their soldiers and their treatment of civilians, is justified with even the most selfless of intentions.
But of course, this is just my view. What do you all think of this controversial aspect of 20th-century Asian history?